Farewell, Normandy
by Yet Another Pseudonym
Summary: Ellen Shepard comes to terms with the loss of the first Normandy with some very welcome help.
1. Alone

"Siha, are you sure you wish to go down there alone?"

She turned toward him, her hair a shadow streaked with deep blue. She closed her eyes, clenched them, perhaps in pain. He'd learned that simple and bright human eyes could speak as many volumes as those sunset eyes that had once met his in his scope. He'd thought them tiny and almost bland and expressionless at first, with no inner lids to speak the heart. Closed, they were night, all light banished. He wanted to smooth away the tightness in those brows, but he didn't dare.

"I have to do this." She reached for his hand, and once again, her flame warmed him, spreading from those soft velvet hands to the heart of him. He wondered if he dared to hold her that her heat would scorch him to ash.

"Is that truly what you wish?"

Those eyes popped open and, far from the sunset that had once entranced him through the scope, noonday sky greeted him. How strange, in the sunset of his own life, that he found daylight awaiting him. "I just wish this was over with!"

Her voice twisted. She gripped his hand, her many fingers tight bands about his. He let her breathe, deep and unlabored, unlike the clenched breaths he drew here in the shuttle bay. "Siha…"

"I know, but I have to do this alone. I have to." She didn't sound convinced, and her usual certainty had vanished to nothing.

"You know you have but to ask."

"I…" Her eyes hardened, the harsh glare of late afternoon. "No."

"I don't wish to be a burden but I don't like seeing you suffer."

Then the fire turned to an inferno as her earthen skin turned as indistinct as her hair. One finger, the second finger, jabbed its way deep into his chest. It scorched him just as he feared.

"Don't you _dare_ say you're a burden! Don't even fucking think that!" He'd seen the same sort of indignation in those sunset eyes that met him now in her narrowed eyes. And then it faded to the softness she usually kept only for him. "I'm sorry, querido. It's this damned mission… I thought I was through with the Alliance. I… I'll see you later."

"I will pray to Kalahira for the lost. Be safe, Siha."

She clutched at his hand for what he wished was an eternity, but passed in the single blink of her lids. "It's just a crashed ship; there's nothing to worry about. EDI's scans are negative." She pressed her blazing forehead against his, and managed a wan smile. "But, thank you for the prayers. God knows they need them."

Back in Life Support, he settled into his chair and folded his hands before him. Normally, the thrum of the vents and the cycling systems soothed him and eased his transition back into his soul. This time, though, the flashes kept intruding on his chant. _Hair, a mass of shadow, but lit with lightning flashes in the sparse white light. Widened eyes, deepened in the lingering shadows. Lush lips pursed in deep earthen skin. A challenge to his skeptical target. A taut body leans back and lips lengthen to a smirk._ He stood and pressed a few buttons.

"EDI, if I might ask a favor…"

"I'll let you know when the shuttle is in docking range, Mr. Krios."

"Many thanks." _Lips curved faintly up at the corners until they rose out of sight._ She seemed to find it amusing whenever he bowed to the ship's AI. _Awareness must be honored in all its forms, Siha._

_Amonkira, let her hunt be successful. Kalahira, may your waves guide those souls to their release._


	2. Oath Postponed

He shifted in his chair, his hands clasped tight before him. Prayer did little to calm him, nor did the vents, or the pulse of the drive core through the window. _She is alone for a few moments, and it's nothing that should worry your heart._ But how could he fulfill his pledge to watch over her when he wasn't by her side? The more he thought, the more unbearable the waiting became, until he swore that legions of assassins lurked in the ship's wreckage just waiting for the right moment to set targeting lasers to her forehead. He stared at the pulse until a clenching in his gut drove him to his feet, and to the empty Main Battery. _The turian must be in Engineering, courting, as Ellen says._

"We both served on that ship. Don't we have a right to go down there?" The footfalls that thudded up and down the hall sped up.

"Keelah, did Shepard ever say we couldn't go when she returns? I'm sure she'll let us take a shuttle down later if you must go."

"You don't want to say goodbye to the real Normandy? You practically lived in its engines."

"Will you be quiet? We have company."

He stepped forward only to see Tali'Zorah back away from the pacing turian almost as if she were embarrassed. The quarian seemed to live her life as if she were a half-intruder, and he could only imagine that Cerberus' crew made her feel all the more out of place. He bowed to them and waited for either of them to speak.

"You look worried," Tali'Zorah said. "Why? Shepard is perfectly safe."

"Lethal ambushes have been sprung from 'safer' places than this. She has no one to protect her if Cerberus decides…"

"Hmph. Cerberus ambushing Shepard? What would they have to gain from doing that?" He wished he could have read the quarian's face through her helmet, but her tone dripped enough acid to melt the bulkheads. "Not that I like defending Cerberus or anything."

"Why would they spring a trap now?" Garrus asked.

"I don't know. I don't like this. And I dislike being unable to uphold my oath to protect her."

"Give the woman her time to grieve!" Tali'Zorah said. "I wish I'd had… Never mind. This isn't the place."

"My apologies, Tali'Zorah." He bowed and turned away, though he didn't think the elevator would take him any place more comfortable than this. _A slumped, suited body no different than the other corpses littering the Alarei's deck. A shriek. Words twisting tight in a whirlpool. A blaze of blue wrapped about purple as his Siha took her in her arms. Low words of comfort before Geth rockets burned._

"That isn't what I meant." Exasperated, somehow. "Look, Shepard lost more than her life the day the Normandy was shot down. She needs time to forget."

"What else did she lose?" She'd never spoken much about it.

"What, you don't know? She and Alenko were pretty hot at it, until he blew her off on Horizon." Garrus leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms.

"Who is Alenko?"

"Rumor was they were going to get married after the last mission was over. Shepard asked him to help us fight the Collectors and he went ballistic, ranting about Cerberus' evils. And this was even after he mutinied with the rest of us to go to Ilos. Alenko always had more emotion than sense." Garrus snorted, his mandible flaps twitching. "I got to witness the 'reunion' in person."

"Ah, I see." His chest closed on him, and his next breaths felt like pure ocean.

What he didn't expect to see was Tali'Zorah rising to her full height, a nightmare of swirling purple and shadow. She stood almost as tall as the turian, and when she shoved her mask into his face, Garrus shook. She crooked a finger and as she spoke, she nearly jabbed it into the man's unshielded right eye. "You _bosh'tet!_ It was Shepard's right to tell him, but you took that away from her."

"I… um… sorry." Garrus shrank away from the long, crooked, accusing finger.

The quarian's mask snout shook back and forth for a moment before she aimed it his way. He didn't know whether to retreat, or apologize, or stay drowning, knowing that she still needed room to grieve over a man she likely still loved.

"Shepard loves you." She put her hand on his shoulder. This time, the three clawlike fingers seemed comforting, rather than potentially lethal. "Someone says your name, and she smiles for hours. Any time someone says, 'see…' or any other sound in that little name you call her, she looks like she's come down with a fever."

"Siha?"

"Oh, my…" She stepped back. "Keelah, did someone just raise the temperature in here? Yes… that word."

He'd never thought a single tiny blue turian eye could pierce through him. "Greaat, I talk to her for hours and hours, and get nothing. You say one word intended for another woman, and turn her to mush."

"I never have my shotgun when I need it." A low sigh through the mask's speaker.

"My thanks, Tali'Zorah. I won't waste any more of your time." He bowed to her.

"What? You're just leaving? Just like that?"

"But, truly, neither of you fear for her?"

"Report coming in from the surface." Ah, the pilot. "Just to untwist all your little knickers." Did the pilot really spy on all of them?

He finally breathed a little deeper when her voice came through, a little hazed with interference, but none the worse for the time away. "Joker, I'm sending coordinates for a team to place the monument." Firing... bullets… her assault rifle. He couldn't keep the twitch from traveling down his spine.

"Commander, what was that?"

"Calm down, Joker. It's just a crate."

"See? She's fine." Garrus snickered at him.

Perhaps Ellen would have been at least a little pleased with him when he trailed both aliens to the mess at Tali'Zorah's insistence. _You don't want to leave me at Garrus' mercy. Please tell me that you don't._ Despite her bluntness, he couldn't help but respond to the woman's almost pushy and insistent friendliness, even after he'd shamed himself running two months before. He'd grown to appreciate the turian after several missions with him, despite the man's almost bitter impulsiveness. Killing Sidonis hadn't changed Garrus much, from his observations. He marveled at the way these aliens seemed to slip into memory, though for them it was an exchange of differing memories, and a dueling over the correct version of shared events.

"Shepard's old motto used to be, 'shoot first, talk later.' Sometimes I miss that Shepard. It would have been a lot easier to talk her into helping me with Sidonis."

"Stupid, stupid," Tali'Zorah muttered. "There is far more to life than shooting and killing."

"Says the woman whose people want to launch a genocidal war on the geth."

"Perhaps that Shepard might have been a little easier to convince…"

"Told you so."

"Excuse me, Mr. Krios." EDI… "Commander Shepard is on board."

"My thanks, EDI. And my thanks to you also, Tali'Zorah and Garrus." He stood and bowed to both.

"Sit! Give her a few minutes."

He sat, but, despite all his training, his gut twisted and the air turned into soup in his lungs. He sat until he could bear it no longer. Had he been stupid to think the first thing she'd do once she returned was to head to the crew deck?

"So, are you going to ask her about Alenko?" He could have sworn the turian was smirking at him.

"Bosh'tet," Tali'Zorah muttered under her breath, and smacked Garrus on one blue-clad arm.


	3. Losing My Religion

He'd never been to her quarters, though she'd invited him once or twice. _Just as well_, she'd said, her smile enormous, _I prefer it down here, anyway. It's not so damned luxurious._ He triggered the door mechanism with the same shiver. Armor haphazardly piled in the corner. An empty cot jammed in next to the white expanse of a bed. On the desk, a photograph face-down next to a terminal, above it, in a clear rack, a replica of the _Alarei_ that they'd found on the ship's bridge. Everything else, devoid of personality, devoid of her. She'd curled herself up in the middle of the bed, knees to chin, as she stared with reddened eyes at two neat rows of pendants spread out at the foot. She hadn't put on her usual jacket and the white under- blouse he'd only seen glimpses of clung tight to her well-defined arms. She didn't look up at first, but instead moved her lips silently, her eyes still affixed to what he supposed were small monuments to each of those lost.

"Siha? Are you well?"

She looked up, and his heart stopped at the streaks of blue paint that ran from the corners of her eyes to her jaw.

"I… dammit… I was just trying to pray for them, and I can't. Some 'Siha' I am. They all deserved better than a pointless death, and two years rotting forgotten on some godforsaken world."

She patted the bed and scooted over just enough to let him sit, but no more. _No more distance._ He'd never found the courage to sit on the same side of the table, or press his lips against her velvet cheek, no matter how easily she seemed to accept his affection. She was so unlike Irikah had been in welcoming his advances; somehow it terrified him all the more that he might lose control and trample over her customs if he let his mind and body do what they wished. But this was not the time for such thoughts. He settled in next to her and slid an arm about her shoulders the way he once had around Irikah, and she snuggled close, his own private sun. He brought his hand to her cheek to brush away the watery blue that marred it only to be shocked by the softness and the vague friction of each of perhaps millions of tiny hairs caressing his palm. She was softer than he'd imagined even from the sheen each hair lent her even in the faintest light. She sighed and wrapped her arms about him.

"Why can't you pray?"

"I expected _something_ when my suit failed. But the only thing on the other side of the blackness is Cerberus, and it was only there for me. I can't even give them a damned prayer for their passing after the Alliance just abandoned their bodies."

"You don't believe in any gods?" He'd heard some humans had abandoned all faith, but he'd never thought she was one of them. Even the asari believed in some sort of larger consciousness.

"I used to. Hell, I used to pray to God until I lost my voice before every mission, and a few times I even swore He answered me. My old commanders used to call me 'The Fanatic.' I'm sure they'd be laughing at me right now." She laid her head against his shoulder and winced. "Ow!"

She straightened suddenly and rubbed a suddenly burgundy spot on her temple. Almost without thinking, he bent his lips to it only to feel her shiver. She was every bit as velvet on his lips as his palms. "Are you well, Siha?"

"I always thought those spikes on your jacket were ornamental. Guess I was wrong. But it was worth it." A wry smile through the paint streaks.

Arashu, how could he be so stupid? He slipped the jacket off to her widened crimson eyes. He hadn't noticed just how chilly EDI kept the temperature outside Life Support until he faced her frigid quarters with his bare arms.

"_Dios mio_," she muttered. "It's a crime for you to wear a jacket."

"It's rather cold in here, Siha," he said, and hoped she'd share her heat with him once more.

"Oh, damn, I'm sorry!" She vaulted over the end of the bed, somehow missing all of the pendants, only to trigger EDI's interface at the opposite end of her quarters. "EDI, warm this place up a bit—6 or 7 degrees. And cut the humidity to the levels in Life Support."

She usually staggered him with her ability to see the subtleties in just about any situation, but perhaps seeing the wreckage had dulled her senses. While she spoke to the AI, he studied the way her thick, rounded hair fell over her cheek and covered it in a blue-lit mass, and followed the motion of her slender, capable hand as it absently brushed the errant strands back behind one earflap.

"Of course, Shepard."

"Thanks, EDI." As she turned, he watched the tight curve of her haunches flow into the sweeping flare of her hips. His breath eased as EDI drained the excess moisture from the air.

She slid back onto the bed and as the air turned half-bearable, she curled back up against him. "You needn't have done that, Siha. You're more than warm enough."

She raised an eyebrow and then smiled, no matter how her eyes still leaked. "This damned room might as well be comfortable for _someone_. This bed is an abomination, especially when everyone else sleeps on cots."

"You miss the old ship?" The thought of what else she might miss set his inner eyelids to spasms.

"No, not really, even if I'd rather jab a fork in my eye than deal with Cerberus. But I'll say this for the Alliance: you know what to do when you get an Admiral's orders. And you know the Admirals prefer you to survive."

That was the last thing he expected to hear. As were her next words, "I only knew a few of these men and women, but they all counted on me to protect them, and I let them down. I knew most of them, but the deaths that hurt the worst are the crew memebers I should have known better: the Draven sisters who helped Wrex and Ash keep our guns in shape. Or Mandira Rahman, who Tali swore up and down was her best assistant. Alexei, who help Garrus maintain the Mako. Hector Emerson, Pressley's off-hours relief…"

Her voice thickened and the additional huskiness made her sound almost drell. He fought his fear and let the hand that he'd let rest on her cheek slide into her hair. It slipped in with an ease he wasn't expecting, almost as if he were diving into deep water, or if he were slipping into the bedcovers beneath him. Her skin might have been velvet, but her hair reminded him more of an asari silk he'd once scrounged for Irikah.

"What truly made you lose your faith in your god?"

"I was always taught that your soul went to heaven or hell right after death. So why the hell am I here two years later? This may be a new body, but my mind seems more or less the same. Either Cerberus made some horrible deal with Satan to bring me back, God's fucking pissed at having my soul sucked back into a hunk of flesh, or none of it's real. Or maybe God's an abstraction. Hell, I don't know anymore."

"Or your god willed that Cerberus bring you back."

"And kept my soul in cryo-storage? Nah, there's too many cracks in the old religion to still believe the way I used to."

"Hm. I've read of the human religious crisis after your people discovered mass effect technology."

"Yeah, but I never cared about that. So, the first whole chapter in the Bible gets hucked because the creation myth is a bunch of garbage written by ancient humans? We already knew that before we found the ruins."

"I understand such things made a large difference for most religious humans."

"Maybe."

"And the settled and 'civilized' galaxy did much to threaten your view of human exceptionalism. Your people still prefer to 'go it alone,' even if that is no longer feasible."

"I have a hard time believing other species didn't share that view even once in their existence."

"The galaxy would prove otherwise. My people never believed we were a 'special creation' of the gods, just a part of the cycle of Rakhana."

"Some of the oldest human religions used to be like that."

"And your exceptionalist religions wiped them out."

"Human history in a nutshell."

"And the wiping out was sometimes voluntary. My own faith faces such challenges, and the youngest no longer seek the ancients' wisdom."

"You have to admit, it feels pretty good to think you're special." A smile and a wink. Thank Arashu that her tears had lessened! " Some of the old human religions still survive, even if most people have forgotten them."

"But if the confusion in your own religion means nothing to you, why did you believe?"

"Because it felt _good_ to think there was a reason for everything. Because I look at the stars and think, 'There's no way in hell all that could be random,' even if my earliest schoolbooks told me that the laws of physics, mathematics and chemistry are far from random in themselves."

"And yet you've never mentioned that losing your faith has bothered you."

"It didn't. Not really. There's too much other shit to worry about."

"Until now."

"Yeah. My _crew_ died cheap deaths that mean _nothing_. They were the reason Sovereign's gone, and Saren was stopped. But they suffocated, died, for no other goddamn reason then the Collectors got fucking bees in their bonnets and decided to kill _me_. And now I can't even give them the same kind of prayers I gave Ash. Fuck."

"Ash?"

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, the last one to survive from her unit on Eden Prime." Her voice dropped, and he intercepted a new tear that sped its way down her cheek. "She survived impossible odds only to die later. By my choice. What the hell kind of galaxy is this?"

"You grieve for all of the fallen…"

"Probably forever."

"And she died by your choice?"

"Ash fought with the salarians on Virmire. I had to choose whether to rescue her or another crewman… At least I could pray for her. At least she died _fighting_, a hero."


	4. The Other

"You've never spoken of the day you lost the ship, Siha. What happened?"

She sighed deep and squeezed him harder. "We got ambushed when we were out mopping up Geth remnants. Joker did his best, but the _Normandy_ was no match for the Collector ship. I had to yell at Kaidan to get him to finally evacuate the crew and leave me to get Joker. I had Joker on the last escape pod when one of the beams threw me back into the wreckage. Then I was choking and spinning in the void and apparently woke up two years later, with Miranda hovering over me, needle in hand."

The pilot had told him of her rescue. "Kaidan?"

"Staff Lieutenant Alenko, my third-in-command." His hand froze in her hair, and she looked up at him, her eyes so deep they almost faded to the shadowy color of her hair. "What is it, querido?"

"I… it is nothing, Siha. You needn't worry."

"If it makes you freeze faster than cryo-rounds, I'm damned well going to worry!" She sat upright, coiled like a whip.

"It seems you have more to grieve than just these lost lives. I will do my best to listen, no matter..." _how much you might still love him. No matter how much I need you, my angel._

"Kaidan's alive and probably better off the way things are now." She didn't sound the least bit sad, nor bitter.

"And yet you've never spoken of him."

"No, not really. There really isn't much to talk about."

"Garrus seems to believe that you have much to say."

"Remind me to kick him somewhere sensitive." She grabbed his hand and pressed her lips to it. He let the tickle travel its way down his spine, and her heat radiate slowly toward his heart. "Not that turians have anyplace sensitive… What do you want to know about Kaidan?"

"He was the friend you spoke of on Horizon."

"Yeah."

"I was told that you were both very close, near to sharing vows."

"Marriage? No. I had my little fantasies: you know, sitting together, old and grey, on a back porch swing surrounded by tons of grandchildren. It never would have worked, though. We were too different, and Horizon showed me just how stupid I was for wanting it."

He let her keep speaking as his heart slowed, and his mind lightened.

"He sent me an apology a few days later and said that 'maybe later' we could try to pick up where we left off. I thought about it, but I knew sooner or later I'd do something that would piss him off even more. Just before we left for Illium, I sent him a message telling him no."

"I apologize, Siha. I don't know what to say." Her hair had dampened in the warmth, and her cheeks shone even more in the cabin's diffuse light.

"Don't even think of saying you're sorry, querido. I'm the one who should apologize—I should have told you about him. I guess I thought it didn't matter. It was over—case closed."

She seemed perhaps too matter-of-fact about the end of the affair. Could he have been so cold if Irikah had rejected him? Would she be so cold after his death? _Reddened eyes across the table, a matter-of-fact voice speaking of 'lost friends' without slander, and only sadness_. And the way she'd arranged the "dog tags" with a reverence, the way she wept for each of the lost gave lie to her supposed coldness. He didn't know if he'd ever understand her, or perhaps even the tangle of feelings in him.

"What was he like, Siha? Am I anything like him?"

"You're jealous!"

"Perhaps. But you ended things recently. Is it not understandable that I might worry?"

She straightened and leaned into him, her breath blazing against his cheek. Her lips, soft, almost plush sent shocks down his spine as they scorched the tip of his nose. She shook her head, and suddenly gave him a soft smile.

"Maybe… Kaidan's quiet, like you, has a good heart like you do, and he's a biotic—one of the first human biotics, and maybe the most powerful. But that's all you have in common. The Alliance is his religion—not surprising, when you understand how much most humans fear biotics. In the Alliance, he was appreciated where he'd be shunned and watched anywhere else. He disagreed with almost everything I did when he served with me. Cerberus really was the last straw for him. Unlike you, he's very inexperienced with life, just like I was."

Inexperienced? He'd thought just the opposite, the way she seemed to ease her way into his heart. He let his inner lids flicker, and she picked right up on it. "I'd had a few one night stands, but nothing serious. Aside from an asari mind-rape, that is."

"You are a beautiful, driven, and powerful woman, Siha. The man who wouldn't want you is a fool."

"You think I'm beautiful?" Her cheeks blended right into her hair, in that same shadowy color. "I've only heard that once before… From Kaidan."

He raised a brow and traced the curve of her cheek with his finger.

"I'm on a ship with Chambers, Miranda, Daniels, Jack, and, hell, Kasumi. 'Beautiful' is the last word I expected to hear about _me_."

"Then your ears must fail you every time you pass by a human male." She stared at him, her eyes wide, and she gasped when he slipped both hands into her hair and brushed it back behind her earflaps.

"You mean the insults? 'Ice queen' was one of the nicer ones, but I heard more of 'ball-breaker,' and 'colder than a witch's tit.' Oh, and, my favorite: 'She'd convert your ass before she'd screw ya.'" There was the bitterness he'd almost expected when she spoke of this Alenko.

"Siha… You hold anger toward those men, but none for the man who refused you. I wish I could understand why."

"I can't hate Kaidan for being true to what I loved most about him. He's an idealist, and I can't blame him for taking a stand against Cerberus. All I really could do was give him his freedom."

"You still love him, then." That sudden thought felt like a fist to the gut.

"Of course. I think part of me always will." His jaw slackened. She kissed his nose once again, and let her hands slide over the back of his neck, twin spots of fire that did little to soothe his heart. "I know you still love Irikah. Human hearts aren't so different, even if our memories are awful."

"You shame me, Siha. I came to soothe you, but you…"

She lay her second finger across his lips, a thin line of warmth against the chill his faithlessness radiated through him. "You know, some women find a little jealousy flattering. And maybe I happen to be one of them."

Her lips twitched into a small smile that heated him just as much as the hand that wandered over his crest. He pursed his lips against her finger, and her sharp intake of breath awakened him far too quickly for his comfort.

"You speak of such things so casually, and yet you've never spoken similar words to me."

"No, I never once imagined what might have happened if I'd been the one in your scope instead. Not once." He stared at her, mute while she closed in on him and pressed her lips to his chin.

This close, the usually faint berry smell of her hair and the citrusy "lemon" scent of her skin nearly overwhelmed him, as did a new scent he couldn't quite identify. It somehow seemed both warm and sharp, with a faint tang to it, something almost _animal_. _Aroused female humans emit scents_, Mordin had told him. _Sharp odors from their mammalian heritage. Terrible stink for other species._ Strangely, he found the scent pleasant when he considered just why she smelled as she did—because of _him_. She shifted herself over his now uncomfortably tight pants and grinned as she rubbed against him. If she was a desert sun, where her lower cleft rubbed him, she burned hotter than a planet's molten core even through a layer of fabric and his own leather. She fit to him far better than he would have guessed from the pamphlet Mordin had sent him—the pamphlet he'd dropped once his eyelids started twitching from imagining…

"So you _are_ happy to see me." Her voice came breathy and short.

"I'm always happy to see you, Siha." He knew he'd missed some strange human subtext when she shook her head, and gave him a half-smile.

"_Especially_ happy." He could feel the heat radiating from her lips as they hovered over his, just out of reach.

Almost against his mind's last reserve of control, he caught himself knotting his hands in her hair and pulling her hard against him. She landed atop him, her lips against his, searing and soft and insistent as she nibbled his lower lip. He didn't resist as she melted against him, or as she sought the widening gap in his lips as he surrendered to her. He caught her upper lip in his and tasted her lip-paint—strangely earthy and bland—blended with the faint salt of the falling droplets from her nose and upper lip. She gripped his lower lip tight in hers with surprising strength, no matter how much give her flesh seemed to have, and a blazing wetness tickled at him. He'd never felt anything quite like it—Irikah's own lips had been firm and her tongue had been only slightly warmer than his. His siha's _breasts_, those twin bumps on her chest that lent her a sweeping flow that reminded him much of Kajhe's endless waves, gave against him as she clutched at him. When she stood, they'd seemed to be firm, not soft and yielding as the rest of her. How long had it been since the purr burst from his throat? She pulled back and he felt her foot slide over the sheets before a metallic jingle seemed to wake her.

"What was that?" And then she slipped out of his arms, leaving him emptier than he'd been in a decade. "Oh, I… _Dios mio…_ I hope they can forgive me."

He stood before she even finished speaking, and grabbed the glinting pendants. He tried to arrange them with the same care and precision that she had, but he fumbled as the chains slipped in his shaking hands. He felt her eyes on him as the chains rustled against the bed's coverlet, but he didn't dare meet them. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that she'd feel the same pull that he did every moment he spent near her. _This_ was not the sort of memory he wished to carry with him, no matter how he still felt the caress of her lips on his. He closed his outer lids only to flick them open when he felt the familiar softness of her hand on his.

"Querido…" Her hair tickled his bared shoulder. "Thank you."

"If I have offended you, Siha…"

"Don't call me 'ball breaker' and we should be good." He met her eyes finally as her voice thickened. A joke, then. She stared at him, her narrow brows furrowed.

"Drell make certain noises when we are _happy_, as you would say it, but I will do my best to suppress them if they bother you. I don't know much about the customs that surround human intimacy."

"Is that what that was? I couldn't hear anything, but… I could _feel_ it in certain places…" She flushed again, and when he put his hand to her cheek, she burned even hotter. "_Intimate _places. It was… nice. So nice I completely forgot my crewmen."

"I never intended…" Her lips temporarily silenced him. "…to dishonor your customs."

She shook her head. "I don't have any customs. I just… I felt like I was spitting on their memories."

"I'm sorry."

"I was the one who kissed _you_, remember? Do me a favor—don't apologize to me. Ever again."


	5. Prayers and Rain

"Would it do any offense to the fallen if I pray for them?"

She clutched at his hand. "Thank you, querido. I… Thanks."

She followed him to the floor and then to her knees before the small shrine she'd tried to create for the lost. He clasped his hands and bowed his head, only to feel her nestle close in to his side. _I will ignore the body just for this moment_, no matter how she lent him strength and Wholeness. For the moment, the heavy waves of Kahje buffeted at the small craft he stood upon next to one of his hanar contacts. He felt the boat rock, back and forth, a strong, alien swinging that somehow soothed his gut. They had wrapped his contact's colleague in kelp, but the inactive pinkish flesh peeked through where the sickly green leaves blew aside in a sudden gust that sent stinging droplets into his eyes. He couldn't blink them away. Here he found it easiest to commune with the goddess who would far too soon be his own guide and companion.

"Kalahira, friend of the dead, guide these souls home through your seas. Ease their trip through your outer domain, that they can find peace anew in your home beyond. May you hold them close to your heart, and grant them the peace that was stolen from them in their passing. Let your waves soothe them, and embrace them in their new lives beyond. I thank you, goddess."

Warm lips on the back of his neck brought him back from the boat's rocking, back to the arms of his personal angel. She had more than nestled up to him—her arms encircled him as if to ward off any evils.

"That was beautiful…" Quiet, reverent, and unlike her usual defiance. "It reminds me of parts of a prayer I said every night as girl, 'The Lord is my shepherd… Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me… Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.'"

"It seems that your god saw you were named correctly, Siha," though he was sure she saw some other connection that eluded him.

"Except that we didn't have sheep on Mindoir." She cracked a smile. "I always saw God as a guardian, but for a protector, He does a damned shitty job of saving his own faithful. Ash believed more than I did, but God didn't do a damned thing for her when I had to save Kaidan on Virmire. I think I like Kalahira better."

"A strange thing for you to say."

"Why? Just as many humans question God or ignore and disbelieve in Him as believe in Him. I just keep thinking of Silvia and my parents and everyone else who died while I lived. Did God protect me because I believed more? Or was God just messing with me by taking everyone I loved? You can't ever understand the mind of God, apparently, especially when He goes out of His way to make no sense. Your gods seem more like helpers and companions than some strict father who imposes his arbitrary will on us."

"The gods can only do so much against chaos, Siha. It's up to us to give the galaxy some order, and to try to redeem ourselves from our own misdeeds. To stop the Wheel of Fire in its tracks, and to save us all from its ravages."

She gave him a wry smile. "It's far easier to believe in your gods, querido. Especially Arashu—she brought you into my life."

_I love you, Siha_. He didn't dare speak such things aloud just yet, though she somehow managed to both understand and confuse him more than anyone he'd ever met. Had it not been but moments before that he'd thought she cared little for his _alienness_? She seemed to have an almost instinctive grasp not just of his religion, but his outlook, no matter how she claimed her own education into her species' philosophers was lacking.

"'Coincidental' miracles are easier to believe," she said.

_Coincidental miracles_—but she was far more than that. He'd once half-considered the way his heart had fallen when he was so close to death to be almost a punishment. Or perhaps the galaxy's entropy having one last laugh at him before his sickness took him away. He had but to look at her, though, to see that she was Arashu's farewell gift to him.

She stood up, and held her hand out for him to take. "A coincidental miracle, Siha?"

She grinned. "Well, ok, the galaxy's greatest miracle."

"That Arashu sent you after me? That Amonkira helped you find me even as I fought to stay hidden? The gods don't work in concert very often."

"Then every moment with you is even more of a blessing. Maybe God was looking out for me after all."

He took her proffered hand and when he'd taken to his feet beside her, she gathered him to her. She fit nearly as well face to face as she did straddling him. He'd never quite noticed that her head fit perfectly tucked in beneath his chin, her hair an unbearable tickle against his throat. "Siha…"

"Mmm?" Noon again as her eyes met his.

He lifted her chin in one hand and pressed his lips against hers. Night as those eyes closed, and she seemed to dissolve into him. He took in every gasp, every flick of her tongue against his, the faint taste of salt, the berry scent of her hair-soap that seemed to permeate everything in her heat. For one as inexperienced as she claimed to be, she tangled well with him, her tongue every bit a worthy opponent, her lips, giving against his own, but far from surrendering. She gripped him tight in her arms and leaned her full weight against him as she blended with him—different from Irikah, once again. Perhaps this was yet another human idiosyncrasy, this feeling of merging. He found it far easier to remain distinct, but sharing, together, but separate wholes. And yet, for all the ease in drell mating, it seemed to lack something—the sort of wild abandon that he'd seen in her many times, the sort that seemed determined to pull him in and fuse him to her forever. He opened his eyes to see her dream, her lips locked to his, her tongue gentle but persistent against the roof of his mouth. She surrendered first, her breath short, and her now-opened eyes wide. She panted as she pulled back just a little, and then let her lips stretch out into a half-smile. He hated the distance as she disengaged, and wondered if he'd ever get used to standing alone again.

"_Madre de Dios…_ Where did you learn to do that? Never mind… I was going to ask you…" Flustered, her cheeks shadowed.

"What is it you wish, Siha?"

"I… um… have to dedicate the monument to the Normandy, and I'd like to honor the dead. Would you come planetside with me?" A small pause between each word as she struggled with her breath. "I think Dr. Chakwas, Garrus and Tali need to say goodbye, and maybe Jacob might feel a pull at his Alliance roots."

Taylor.

"Of course, Siha. I would be honored. You may wish to wash first, however."

She narrowed her eyes as she stared at him and then flushed. She nodded with a half-smile, and saluted Alliance-style. "Sir, yes, sir! I'll get you a towel."

He looked down and noticed her paint had smeared all over his chest, and perhaps everywhere else, for all he could tell. Her grin turned mischievous and then she darted out into the hallway without a glance back. He stared after her as the door closed, stunned that he already missed her. Should that have surprised him? His meditations had long since become impossible when she wasn't there with him in Life Support. He'd grown to count on the rhythm of her breath as she read endless reports, and the short series of beeps as she typed messages into her PDA to guide him in slowing his thoughts. When she wasn't in her proper place across the table, he'd keep a constant ear out for the small beep and the hiss of the door that preceded her inevitable, and unneeded request for his time. What could be taking her so long? He twitched after his tenth failed attempt to settle into contemplation, and his gaze settled on the disrupted picture frame. _Do not do this,_ he thought, but his body overrode his mind as he righted it and stared at the brown-haired human man imprisoned within. The man didn't smile, even though he likely looked directly at his Siha, not even the faintest hint of a smile. _This could be kin, not her former lover_. He couldn't imagine how a man might not smile at her, though that Taylor did his own share of scowling. He studied the photograph closely, noting the slightly wooly texture of the man's hair, the crinkle about his eyes as he stared into the lens, the grey of a ship wall, perhaps the old _Normandy_'s, behind him.

He almost dropped the frame when the door blipped behind him. She slipped next to him and lay her head against his shoulder. Her hair felt clammy and cold against him, and a trickle of water dribbled its way down his arm. Didn't humans prefer hot showers? "That's Kaidan."

"Siha, I'm sorry to intrude. I shouldn't have…"

"Querido, shhh. Everything I have is yours." She rubbed his arm, a soft friction that sent chills down his spine, even as her words warmed his heart. "I should do something with that picture, I guess. But I didn't want to leave it moldering forgotten in a drawer. Anyway, I brought you a towel."

"It seems wrong for this man not to smile at you."

"That picture's from a news profile done on the _Normandy_ crew after the Council appointed me Spectre. All my own photos were lost in the crash. Before Horizon, I wanted something to hold onto… This was the best still I could find of him."

She handed him a slightly moistened towel that seemed to have been wrung so many times it had lost shape. So much water had been squeezed from it that he wondered if it would be of any use at all. But that was his Siha—worrying when she shouldn't, and thinking too much of his comfort—

"Damn! I should have dried my hair better…" She swiped frantically at the droplet that had nearly reached his wrist.

"A little water won't shorten my time, Siha. I do shower." He reached for the towel, only to be blocked by her free hand.

She slipped underneath his hands and stroked the towel across his chest in slow swirls. She looked up at him as the fabric nubbins caressed him, her cheeks just on the edge of burgundy, and her hair bedraggled and raining slow fat drops onto her under-blouse. "Sorry… Great, now I'm going to have to take another cold shower."

More human strangeness. Her lips tightened at the corners, as if she were trying to keep from grinning. She seemed somehow more fetching disheveled and soaked, free of whatever the stiffener was that kept her hair more or less in place, and of the perpetual paint she wore. He raised his brow.

"Just imagining…" He could see hints of her flush just on the edge of darkness, but still clearly red without the deepening of her cheek-paint. "You… shower… sharing… I'll shut up now. Right…"

She turned away, leaving the towel draped over his arm, and the sudden warmth rushing down his spine now that he saw the flush for what it was. He ran the towel over his face and relished the citrusy scent of the soap she'd squeezed gently through it. She'd done a decent enough job on his chest, as the faint blue streaks on the snowy towel attested. Sharing a shower… That tickled him perhaps as much as the sudden thought of reading more of Mordin's pamphlets and watching his queue of "educational" vids. Perhaps once the mission was over, or perhaps sooner, Arashu willing.

She closed the door and paused in front of the mirror with a strange collection of brushes, tubes and sprays. "Sit, querido. This might take a while."

She went to work with tubes and brushes and an endless array of paints and powders, until he noticed she worked a particularly fluffy brush over dark red powder. She started and almost dropped the brush when he moved in behind her.

"Siha," he whispered into one ear, and delighted when her reflection flushed deep burgundy. "You're far too beautiful to fade into shadow." He ran his finger along her cheek, and soaked in its blazing heat. "The galaxy suffers when you hide yourself."

Eyes wide, and the flash of sudden perception he'd gotten to know so well. "You can't… Oh…" She shuffled around the closet's inner drawers and then sighed.

He slipped in front of her as her hand darted toward a small cylindrical tube and pressed his lips to hers. Soft, yielding, but seeking, they parted under his, and she nibbled gently at his lower lip. This time, none of the paint intruded, and he tasted pure salt with a hint of mint beneath. She straightened too quickly for his wish, but her smile seemed to float and her eyes had softened as if she was caught in solipsism. A spray from a cylindrical bottle, and curving strokes of a large-bristled brush, and she returned to her normal semi-polished self.


	6. Changes

Polished until she stared at the pendants on the bed. She gathered them up one by one and stacked them on top of the room's smaller desk in five orderly piles next to a damaged PDA he hadn't taken in properly.

"Pressley's diary," she said as she followed his gaze. "Reading that felt like an invasion, but I couldn't stop myself. My old XO and I weren't so different. Liara and the rest saved him too."

He reached for it, an eyebrow raised, and his outer lids twitching. She gave him a smile and handed him the PDA. He read every last racist thought in the first entry, twitching almost against his training. The second… Perhaps it wasn't so bad—this Pressley seemed at least a little more open than Operatives Taylor and Lawson, though he still cringed a little at what he read. And the last… Strange to see someone once so hostile toward any unlike him now regretting his thoughts. He'd heard too many stories of his own Siha to give her much of a chance when he'd first met her—stories of non-humans shot down on a whim, the elimination of the old Council, her famous disdain for almost every non-human she'd spoken to, the casual way she'd slaughtered a whole army of mercenaries to meet him. She'd surprised him in more ways than he could ever have counted. Most of the humans he'd met had.

"Pressley's granddad fought the turians when they tried to wipe out Shanxi. You know how I met my first aliens. Ash got crap assignments because her granddad surrendered Shanxi. Kaidan was more flexible, even though a turian made his biotic training a living hell. Looking back, we must all have been every non-human's worst nightmare of a crew. _Dios mio_, I'm just glad most of us learned better. Adams warmed me up to Tali pretty fast, but it took me too long to get used to Liara."

Hm. That explained much. Drell had never faced systematic targeting by any alien race as the humans had. But his own people had never been quite so brash. They had, however, been saved by another species. Perhaps if the humans had met the hanar first, they might not have been so hostile to the rest of the galaxy. "The asari mind-rape you mentioned, was that Liara?"

"Sha'ira the consort. Ugh. All I wanted was a weapon mod and maybe a few credits for the work I did. I _really_ don't swing that way. Poor Liara looked up some extranet information on me the second time I went to talk to her, and I yelled a little too loud and a lot too long. Two months of apologies, and she finally stopped cringing."

And yet, when he'd met Liara on Illium, he'd sensed more than just a casual friendship on the asari's part. Perhaps his Siha was oblivious to it, or, more likely, she deliberately blinded herself as she had when she'd attempted to engage in "girl talk" with Samara.

"And the krogan and Garrus?"

"Despite all my whining, I liked Garrus almost from the get-go. And the first time I fought beside Wrex, I felt at home." She grinned. "Any enemy of red tape is my friend."

_Then why not that Taylor?_ he wanted to ask her. He instead remembered a strange story he'd once dismissed as little more than myth about her defending one of the hanar on the Citadel. He'd been sure it was nothing more than falsehood when he'd heard the rest of the stories about her hatred of aliens, but her own stories made him wonder if perhaps he hadn't been mistaken. And she'd expressed more than a little disgust about the treatment of non-Council races.

"Were there any species you did appreciate?"

"I don't know why, but I liked the volus. And I wanted to hug every elcor I met."

"And the hanar?"

"I still don't know what to make of them. You can't fault them for civility, but I do fault them for… Well, you know I don't agree with what they did to the drell after they saved some of you. Maybe it's a human thing, but whether individuals or species are actually equal or not, we like to at least claim we think they are—even if we don't truly believe it." Another grin.

He put the PDA down on the desk and watched the set of her eyes and her lips as he asked, "I'd heard a story that spread among the hanar almost as a virus, that 'Shepard is an enlightened defender of the Enkindlers.' The hanar claimed you defended one of their most fanatical from C-Sec, and that you wished his words to be spread."

She twitched a little, and then a rueful smile spread slowly across her face.

"The preacher? I wanted to get in a few jabs at the turian C-Sec officer who harassed him because I was pissed off at the damned turian councilor who had just spent an hour haranguing me. Asshole. Anyway, I hate seeing someone's right to speak and believe being trampled on for no good reason; the hanar wasn't hurting anyone. Besides, no one was listening to him."

A very human, and a very practical perspective. In some ways, she hadn't changed. "I thought the story was a myth, just like most of the other stories that sprang up in your wake, Siha. Hm."

"I thought you'd approve." A hint of inquiry, sudden confusion in those eyes. The smile, gone.

He allowed himself a full smile. "Of course, Siha. It seems that whenever I begin to understand you just a little, I learn something that makes me wonder if I ever will."

Her own smile returned. "Welcome to my world. I get the feeling I could spend fifty asari lifetimes with you, and you'd still surprise me."

"Only fifty?"

"I'd sell my soul to be able to have even one." She dug deep into her armor pile and snapped the vest closed around her chest. "Or half of one."

"A drell lifetime," he muttered. He needed to pray, to meditate, and to remember the peace he thought he'd achieved until she woke him.

Her forehead tightened and she closed her eyes, only to open them as she shoved her greaves and gauntlets on. Trust him to ruin a moment by reminding her…


	7. Live!

"Siha, I…"

"I didn't know how to ask you this, but…" She grabbed her helmet. "I talked to Mordin about your illness, and he thinks once the Collectors are taken care of that he might… He wouldn't tell me what he intended to do, actually. 'Doctor-patient confidentiality. Only tell Thane.'"

Mordin? Why would the salarian be interested in a drell-only sickness? Whatever he might do seemed an egregious waste of talent and time, when the Reapers waited to plunder the galaxy and destroy all life.

"Tell me you'll talk to him!" He'd never heard even the faintest note of pleading in her voice until she asked this. Could he dare even allow himself a small hope? "All I know is he claimed he needed a human control. And he has one if you'll…"

"Later. I must meditate first." What would the scientist do to her? He'd seen enough of the salarian style of research on Tuchanka.

"Oh." Quiet, flat. She turned away, her eyes cast down.

"Siha, I don't wish to hold any false hope, nor to offer it to you. I can't have you needled or sliced or jabbed or hooked up to machinery for my sake."

"I'm not letting Kalahira take you," she said, her voice suddenly fierce. "Not without a fight, and not while there are options. Mordin can grow an entire body's worth of organs in me if he wants, and I won't give a damn." She was _siha_ to the very core.

"Mordin has far more valuable projects to research than my health. I'm not worth what the loss of his time will cost the galaxy." Calm, he must stay calm, no matter how much the pain and defiance in her voice destroyed what little resistance remained and shattered his heart into millions of pieces.

"Screw the galaxy! You think the galaxy means anything to me if you're not in it?"

"Siha, I've never concealed my illness from you. When the time comes, whether sooner or later, you will have to walk away." Even if he lived a full span, he would die long before she would.

"You think I didn't know what I was getting into? You should know me better than that." She swallowed hard, and her voice thickened. Faint traces of redness darkened her eyes once more. "I knew the risks of lov… of caring about you from the beginning. If it happens, I'll regret nothing and will be thankful for the blessing of the time I do have. But I'm not going to just sit quietly and do nothing when there's even the smallest chance that you can recover. _Fuck_ that!" Love? Yes, as he replayed her words. The indignation, the hurt… How Irikah had sounded when he'd taken his first contract after Kolyat was born.

"Siha…"

The helmet went flying across the room, the arm that flung it such a blur that he nearly missed the motion. It landed with a flop against a few of the bed's pillows.

"Damn it! Does it really hurt to _talk_ to him? You're not saying yes or no, just exchanging a few goddamn words!"

"If it will please you, Siha." He hated the defeated look in her eyes, the way the red deepened in them, and the edge of pain that sharpened her voice to rend worse than a knife.

Defeated, yes. "If that's the best I can get, I'll take it." She forced a smile.

What was it she wanted? He still saw the traces of pain in her furrowed brow, the way she pinched her lips so tight they lightened. "Is that not enough? Is there more that you wish?"

"I don't want you to do this for me. I want you to do it for Kolyat, and for yourself. I want you to believe that you're worth any cost." She looked down, and her voice came out half-choked. "Because you are."

_Kolyat…_ She seemed almost to collapse onto the edge of the bed, head cast down, hair shadowing her face, back held somewhat rigid by her confining armor. Even through the plating on her gauntlets, he could see that she clenched her hands together tight enough that they might seize up. He'd kept himself rigid, hands gripped behind his back while she cut him to the bone with her words and her pain, and hoped his body would hold him up while his mind withered under her assault. But this, he couldn't bear, knowing that the hurt she usually kept hidden from even the most penetrating eyes had finally taken her over. He felt it radiating from her as if it were a biotic wave, and the thought of Kolyat's tears amidst her grief weakened his body. He forced himself beside her, to accept the full brunt of her pain. The stream of words he'd begun to form dried up when he tentatively put an arm around her. Her hardsuit's ceramic plates dug into his flesh and he winced. He drew her head against his neck with his free hand and pressed his lips against her forehead.

"What is it, Siha?" he said finally after her hands seemed to relax just a little.

"Kolyat is damned lucky to have a dad who's alive and who loves him. God knows what I'd give to see Mom and Dad once more… just to give them my love." She choked even harder on these words, though her eyes remained dry. "Never mind. I'm being stupid—I guess seeing the Normandy hit me harder than I thought."

_Damned lucky to have a dad who loves him…_ That made him wince all the harder, no matter how he'd blotted out the digging of her armor. He'd done too much damage to Kolyat to ever think of his son as being _lucky_, even if the C-Sec officer Bailey and his Siha had ensured Kolyat's wholeness. And beyond that, her message, _Don't hurt Kolyat even more than you already have._ She shook in his arms, first a gentle trembling, and then a quaking.

"Do you wish to speak of your parents?"


	8. Mindoir

"I guess..." She stripped off her gauntlets and slipped her arms around his waist. Fortunately, his jumpsuit protected him, though he could still feel the plates pressing against him. "You already know more or less what happened, but… This memory never fades, never dulls, even if I've forgotten the exact shade of Dad's eyes, or the way the light reflected in Mom's hair. I hear the voices still when I'm alone.

"The day the batarians came, Dad, Mom, and Silvia's parents were having a little party: Mr. Hernandez had done the calculations, and we were finally about pay off the rest of our resettlement debts once the harvest was over. Mom and Dad met the Hernandez family in Scotland a few years before Sil and I were born. They worked together in this ramshackle factory that was always on the edge of closing. Finally, it did, and, rather than starve, our families split the cost of emigration on a joint credit line and headed for Mindoir after Dad saw a recruitment ad about three years before I was born."

"The Silvia you mentioned earlier?"

She nodded.

"Sil and I grew up together just like sisters. That day, Mr. Hernandez was giving long speeches, Dad was singing old Scottish drinking songs, glasses were clanking, Mom and Mrs. Hernandez danced around like idiots, and Sil and I were bored as hell. We both begged and pleaded to leave—Brandon and Jorge waited for us in the fields, but Dad ignored us, and Mr. Hernandez lectured Sil on the importance of celebrating fiscal solvency or something. Dad finally yelled at me for being the little ungrateful idiot I was, and then the ground shook as the Alliance lasers fired.

"Mr. Hernandez was paranoid, and his paranoia had infected Dad just as much. 'Batarians,' he'd said to Dad, 'they'll come and kill us all. Or take us as slaves. We have to be prepared.' I was raised to shoot—I took my first dummy shots at a target when I was seven. Dad and Mom had spent their first surplus on three top-of-the-line turian pistols which Mr. Hernandez insisted we carry at all times. When these hideous four-eyed things surrounded us, we were ready. They gargled something in their native language—it reminded me of rocks spinning in a vat, and we shot them down. We didn't know what they were saying; translators were a luxury only the richest could afford in the colony, and they didn't bother to speak galactic. But we knew what they wanted. We clustered together, Sil, her parents, Mom and Dad, and we fought our way clear of the main unit that rushed its way toward us. We tried to move back, to rush for the Alliance garrison, but there were too many, and we were forced to cover behind haybales as our pistols overheated. More and more of them came, endless waves, and they carried not just the usual pistols and shotguns, but heavy duty weaponry. They were going to try to take out the entire garrison!

"Mr. Hernandez dissolved in a hail of bullets. Mrs. Hernandez collapsed beside what was left of him on the ground, howling and howling. I yanked Sil along with me. She stopped firing, though, when more slugs silenced her mother's cries. 'No time to stop, Ellen. Silvia—be strong. Your parents died for you.' Dad wasn't the best with words, but I wasn't going to end up like the droves of colonists we saw being dragged away, screaming. So I dragged her with me, and tried to keep firing at the same time. I took a few down, but Mom and Dad were far more effective. We'd gotten close to the garrison when a squad of batarian heavies aimed their artillery at us. Sil collapsed as she saw them, and I think she'd finally had it. A batarian rushed at her, and I barely took him down before six more moved in. I didn't have a prayer of dragging her away or of keeping her safe; the shell that came rushing at my head convinced me of that. I barely rolled aside as it landed in the dirt, and its fragments tore Dad's arm to bits.

"The batarian bellowed something in its nasty language as it hauled Sil to her feet. I couldn't move at first, and I stared as the alien shoved something deep into the base of Sil's skull. She howled, but I knew there wasn't a damned thing I could do as blood dribbled out, and then grey… Dad yanked me back while Mom did her best to cover. I hated Dad so much for it for years, but I understand now why he aimed his pistol right at Sil's heart and pulled the trigger…"

"Your father killed your friend?" An act of mercy, perhaps, but an act that would wound a bystander forever. It was not the kind of choice he ever pictured a human making. No matter how humans seemed to embrace their individuality at any cost, they all seemed to hold a naïve hope at their very hearts that seemed close to unbreakable. He thought, perhaps, that such a man would hold on and survive, so that he might avenge the enslaved and eventually rescue the girl with guns blazing. His Siha would likely do such a thing.

She nodded. "I never understood why until I met Talitha. My hatred had faded to apathy, but when she held the Normandy hostage, I finally understood… She'd been freed by Alliance soldiers, something that doesn't happen near enough. She was lucky, but wrecked. She was _six_ during the raid, had known nothing but beatings and shocks and torture… Hard labor, pens, control… I thought she was weak for breaking, but I'll never think that again. I talked her down, and convinced her to sedate herself so the Alliance counselors could help. She's recovering…" A long sigh. "What were the odds that they'd find Sil, though? God isn't fond of creating miracles. And there are things worse than death— like being forced to surrender yourself."

"It seems few can wound a child as grievously as a father can." _Kolyat_._ Perhaps he will forgive me before my own passing._ She clutched at the hand that rested on her cheek, searing it with her heat and her pain.

"A child can't understand what must be done, even if the parent can. He will, querido, and he'll probably do it far faster than I could."

"Perhaps."

"Faith," she whispered. "Have faith."

"What happened next?" He understood then how she could lose her own faith in her god; thinking of Kolyat letting go of a decade of pain so quickly seemed near impossible.

"He loves you, and he's started to forgive."

He just nodded, though he sensed that she was right in that unshakable way of hers. She turned and kissed him lightly on his chin before she spoke again.

"I screamed and screamed as Dad hauled me toward crazy old man Hicks' old-fashioned brick and mortar homestead, and then an artillery barrage brought the whole thing down on top of us. Mom shoved me down, and tried to shelter me with her body, while Dad bent himself over my head. The falling bricks and dust crushed them, and I remembered nothing after Mom's dying groans until a sliver of light opened above me, and I saw several of the Alliance soldiers staring down once I stopped squinting. They told me I'd been under there for two days…

"I spent the next two years in an Alliance school for raid orphans, and the psychiatrists drugged the hell out of me. They forced me to talk, to write about it, to live it over and over and then when that didn't work, they tried to erase the memory with more drugs. Eventually, I recovered, sort of. At least, I recovered enough for the shrinks to leave me alone. But I'll never forget that my last words to Mom and Dad were from anger and stupidity. Never. And I'll never forget the way I wasn't able to save Sil. If I'd yanked her up, if I'd knocked Dad's pistol out of his hands… _Dios mio_…"

"Your father's gun kept you alive, and his body brought you shelter. Would you have been happier to surrender your mind and your body to the slavers, Siha? You could never have outrun them or outgunned them." He'd listened to the whole story with mounting horror, and imagined how Irikah must have felt in her last moments. Alone. Tormented. Lost.

"Maybe. Maybe that's the truth, or the rational way of looking at it. You can't be rational about some things. You know, besides the shrinks, no one else has ever heard this. You'd think I'd regret Torfan now, but I don't. Those bastards deserved it, and worse." He admired the steadiness in her voice as she spoke, for no matter how his heart trembled at her suffering, she'd stopped shaking as soon as the memory took her over.

"I'm sorry, Siha. I…" He closed both lids. "It seems you have more courage than even the tallest of tales hinted at."

"Courage? Hah!" She snorted. "If I'd had courage, I'd have faced my own demons instead of allowing them to control me for, hell, sixteen years, I think."

"For a woman with no courage, you seem to have accomplished much, and have been an inspiration to many." Perhaps he understood human humor better than he thought when she gave him a wry smile. "You're my Siha, always. You saved me, saved Kolyat, saved the Citadel, saved the rest of the crew from their personal demons..."

She shook her head. "You don't understand, do you?"

He raised a brow and let his inner lids flicker. No, he didn't understand, and he figured even a human male wouldn't understand.

"It's never occurred to you that you're _my_ Siha, has it?"

That stopped him short as he reached for words. He could do nothing but stare at the woman who had roused him so soundly from slumber that he could never imagine sleeping again, no matter what the future brought. _Her_ Siha. He couldn't even manage a small correction to her misuse of the angels' gender. No, he'd never once considered that he might have had a similar impact on her, even if he had once tried to see himself through her eyes. Nor had he considered that he might be a positive force for anyone. She looked at him, bemused, her lips tightly pulled at the corners, as if resisting their will to bloom into a huge grin. That smile finally encouraged him to words.

"Arashu's angels are as female as their mother."

"Fine," she said, "Si-_ho_, then." The smile widened.

"My translator seems to have failed."

"I suppose you can't gender-ify the drell language like you can Spanish." She muttered a quick explanation that had him smiling right back.

"Querida," he said, and let a hand wander along the back of her neck, "my Siha." The "Spanish" word felt strangely right on his lips.

"You were the one who saved Kolyat," she said. "I was just along for the ride. You did just as much as I did to help everyone else on the team. You keep me locked onto the right course—without you, I'd slip back… You awoke me every bit as much as you claim I awakened you. I just wish you could see it, querido."

"I am your arm, Siha. You are the mind behind the body, the eye that aims the gun. I am but the fingers on the trigger that tighten and fire when you say the word."

"Just fingers, just a body." She shook her head. "Just a body who speaks his mind and whose guidance I trust more than anyone else's on the ship."

She trusted him perhaps too much, and he suddenly realized just how many of her decisions he'd influenced. On Illium, during his second mission with her, she'd nearly shot a surrendering mercenary, and handed over evidence to a volus that would have implicated him in illegal trade. He'd raised his brows as she'd half-surrendered the PDA, and she'd nodded. _You probably cost us an upgrade schematic_, she'd said later, a half-smile spread across those lips he'd found enticing even then. He'd cringed inwardly, waiting for the indignation he'd thought would follow. _Pitne For probably paid well. But I guess I'll sleep better tonight, and Samara won't hunt me down after the mission ends. At least not for this. Thanks._ He hadn't know just then what to make of her, but he'd been surprised by the flush of warmth she'd sparked in him with her simple, unassuming concern for his wellbeing, her defense of him when Taylor went after him, and her interest in his faith. She didn't see him as a ruthless killer or a brute, or even a sinner, but as a friend, a lover, an equal, and now, an advisor. A savior. Tali'Zorah was right: she _loved_ him, whether she spoke the words or no.

"I am not sure your faith is well-placed, Siha."

"And I'm damned sure your faith in me is misplaced. At some point, you just have to get over it and accept that someone trusts you."

"Perhaps you see something I cannot. You have more history with Tali'Zorah and Garrus. And the pilot."

"I trust all of them to get my back, Garrus especially. He wavers, though, and defers to me when he shouldn't. Maybe it's a turian thing. Tali's very single-minded, and focuses too much on the geth. Not that I blame her—it's not like she asked her ancestors to confine her to that suit. I trust Joker to bail our asses out of some stupid situation I get us stuck in, but he's not command material. I trust Miranda's forecasts and resource projections—she's the best logistics person I've ever met. But when it comes to the decisions that matter, you and I are often of one mind, and if a little too much practicality gets in my way, I know you'll steer me toward what matters."

No mention of Taylor at all. Or Mordin. Of Mordin, though, little needed to be said. Were it not for the salarian's insistence on using her as a "control," he had little issue with the man, and his Siha had no reservations in speaking of him. He trusted Taylor about as far as a child could throw him.

She kissed him on the forehead and stood, and where her lips pressed, he felt the heat of her lips linger. She reached for her helmet once again, and gave him a smile. "You know I'll be here no matter what you decide, don't you?"

He smiled. "I had no serious doubts, though your helmet might say otherwise."

"Sorry…" She burned deep burgundy.

"I have come to a decision, Siha."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"I will speak with Mordin." Her lips spread wide, and this time, he sensed her smile was genuine. "And I will agree to his terms if..." He paused just to watch the change in the set of her lips; they tightened at the left corner. Human lips were marvelous at conveying every small change of emotion. He noted the way she swallowed as if she wanted to speak, but she just waited, no matter how he sensed it killed her. "…he doesn't inject you or poke you with needles. I won't have you suffer on my account."

She snorted. "I've been poked, prodded, inoculated, modified, enhanced… And that was before Cerberus got its claws on me. A little sampling won't hurt much more than my pride."

"Perhaps your pride is too high of a price." He allowed his own lips to twitch a little, though she usually picked up on his humor easily enough. "We will speak with Mordin later together, if you will accompany me."

She smiled again. "Wild horses couldn't drag me away, querido. You know that Mordin was probably jerking me around, right? If what Mordin told me about 'human to drell contact' was true, I'd be swollen like a balloon by now and seeing bugs crawling all over the walls."


	9. Gathered

As disparate flowers, she gathered those who cared. They numbered far more than he'd anticipated: the two Cerberus engineers, Daniels and Donnelly, Dr. Chakwas, Tali'Zorah, Garrus, and to his dismay, Operative Lawson. Taylor, much to his relief, wasn't among them, though she seemed a little _too_ annoyed that he wasn't.

"You were Alliance, Jacob."

"Not at heart, Commander."

"Miranda's coming."

"She just wants to make sure you don't run off with the shuttle."

"Right."

"Commander."

The doctor shot him endless glances when they finally made it aboard the shuttle that he could read far too well. Every meeting since he'd joined the crew gone the same, and only Ellen's presence had kept her silent this time.

_Mr. Krios. Have you spoken to the Commander yet?_

_I have spoken to my Siha many times, and I hope to many more before we seek the Collectors._

_You know damn well what I'm talking about. When are you going to tell her that you shouldn't be fighting?_

_Never. I gave my pledge to her and to my gods that I will watch over her until my body no longer allows me…_

_And if you're injured, that might be a lot sooner than you think. Don't you think the Commander would prefer you to live than to shoot beside you until you get yourself killed or incapacitated?_

_The gods willed my body's early departure, and my Siha knows that well._

_Stubborn as always._

He kept his arm around her on the shuttle, and mused over her earlier exchange with the turian while she simultaneously engaged in three separate conversations with the rest of the crew. He'd never achieve the same sort of familiarity with even her closest friends that she had for even the least on her crew.

"You think you could check your facts a bit before you go flinging bullshit around, Garrus. Kaidan and I weren't even close to marriage, let alone retiring from the Alliance military so we wouldn't be court-martialed."

"You should check _your_ facts, Shepard. Someone named 'Alen60387' forgot to clear his history when I went to use the extranet terminal after him."

"What?"

"Let's see… 'Honeymoons on Thessia,' 'Galaxy's Best Bridal Suites,' and, 'Dear Dinah, How Do I Propose to My Girlfriend?'"

"What? Seriously?" He'd never before heard her voice climb into the high registers.

The turian burst into a deep, vibrating laugh. "Gotcha, Shepard!"

He heard her elbow smack somewhere into the turian before he saw that she had, in fact, chosen Garrus' gut. _You chose the wrong spot, Siha. Beneath the jaw is much more effective._ She winced, but kept what should have been a deafening scream down to a low groan.

"Ow… Damn. You're made of rock, aren't you?"

"Hey, I didn't ask you to try to maul me," Garrus said.

"Are you all right, Siha?" He rushed to her, slid his arms around her and pressed his lips to her cheek. No, she had not been wounded in the slightest, nothing like the bleeding he'd seen when she'd taken a few too many slugs before her suit could repair the damage, but she had not yet given him the freedom to hold her and coddle her.

She grinned. "Much better now. Son of a bitch, I wasn't expecting that." She put her helmet down on Chakwas' desk and rubbed her elbow almost sheepishly, not that one could reach flesh or bone through ceramic plate.

"No one's asking how _I_ am after Shepard assaulted _me_."

"That's because you're an idiot," Tali'Zorah said. "You deserved it and more."

"And you're made out of something harder than stone, my armor, and, hell, the Normandy's new plating. Damn, Garrus!"

"Who would have thought the great Commander Shepard was so fragile?"

"Yeah, yeah… laugh it up." Except she'd joined the turian as he took her up on her offer while Tali'Zorah's helmet seemed to exude disapproval and Dr. Chakwas stared at them with a crooked half-smile.

Now she bantered around with Engineer Donnelly about something called "haggis." A controversial foodstuff, it seemed from Engineer Daniels' snickering and Operative Lawson's own moue of disgust.

"Yer Dad ate haggis for breakfast, Commander?"

"Even when Mom told him that if she ever smelled it again she'd get a divorce."

"And what did ye think of it?"

"It tastes like _dirty_ ass," Engineer Daniels said as Donnelly shot a glare at her.

"Not that again, woman!"

"And smells ten times worse. You know what made me believe in God? Satan lived in Dad's breakfast, and only prayer could ever vanquish it. Prayer, and airing the house out for the rest of the day."

"Makes me glad I'm dextro," Garrus said.

Tali'Zorah nodded, perhaps the first time he'd seen the quarian agree with Garrus.

"Yer Dad was a true Scottsman, Commander."

The banter kept her eyes from spilling over, though they seemed more than liquid enough.

"We're not going to steal the shuttle, Miranda."

"I'm sorry, Shepard?"

"Just checking. As always, Jacob's full of shit."

"Commander, I'm here because…." He hadn't thought the mechanical woman capable of being injured.

"I know." She smiled at the woman. "Shame that some people can't see that. Thanks."

_You trust Operative Lawson? She's cold, Siha, colder than the winter rains on Kahje._

_She's been hurt. A lot. I understand a little of it—I used to be just like her, but without the looks and biotics…_

_Your people would consider her attractive?_

_What, you don't?_

_She's rather… round._

The shuttle pilot's landing seemed rougher than usual and Dr. Chakwas rubbed her shoulder.

"Commander, I knew getting solid ground beneath me would kill me. This suit's already bad enough."

"And the breather's going to maim you first before you kick the bucket."

"Oh, for some brandy!"


	10. Kith and Kin

"Oh, Keelah!" Tali'Zorah said. "It's worse than I thought."

Ellen looked about her, and from what little he could see of her eyes in her helmet's narrow glass strip, he noted the creasing at the corners as she alternately opened and clenched her eyes shut to hold back the moisture that glistened there. He followed her gaze to huge piles of wreckage, largely intact sections of ship that scattered over a far larger area than he'd anticipated. She'd had the monument placed before the old ship's side paneling—the letters stood mostly intact in a language he couldn't read, but that he recognized from the second ship. _Normandy_, she'd said when she first brought him aboard months before, _it's a region on Earth._ The monument itself seemed dwarfed by the lettering, let alone the ship's side wall that towered far overhead. He didn't know human art well, but something in the monument's almost gaudy simplicity galled him, and struck him as almost disrespectful where souls had parted for the final shore.

"If you want to look around, to say personal goodbyes, go ahead." She leaned against him at his side, her arm around his waist as she spoke to the crew who gathered with her. "We've got nothing but time."

Garrus patted her on the shoulder and his helmet nodded with him. "Come on, Tali."

"Not now, bosh'tet," the quarian said, her voice thick with the same tears he'd heard her shed on the _Alarei_. "A fallen ship must be mourned."

"I need to feel the spirit of the place." The turian's voice cracked amidst its low vibration.

"Well, then, go! Keelah!"

"Tali, he's grieving too. All of us are."

"I know, Shepard, but…"

"We're here for each other, even though we couldn't be here for the dead. I wish I could have done better…"

"Commander, you did what you could. Jeff lives because of you."

"I wish I could believe that, Doc. We'll meet up here when everyone's finished."

"Jeff told me never to tell you this, but he's months overdue in sharing a drink. Not long after we lost you, he said, 'She saves my life, loses hers, and the last words I say to her aren't, "Thanks for my life, Shepard," but "Watch the arm!"' He tortured himself with that for months."

"Joker not actually joking? Never thought I'd see the day…"

"I'm sure he wishes he was down here with us. If you'll excuse me, Commander, I want to visit what's left of Medbay."

Even Operative Lawson wandered off to visit other parts of the wreckage while she stood beside him, her eyes affixed to the monument. What did she see when she looked upon it? Not the ugly representation of a ship's speed rendered as a simplistic spiraling wave in a hideous deep gold, he hoped. Or the primitive version of a tiny _Normandy_ that seemed as if it might be swallowed whole by the wave.

"Just a sec," she said, and the monument dwarfed even her speaker-amplified voice. "I…"

"Whatever it is you need from me is yours, Siha."

"Just a little time. A little prayer…"

She fell to her knees before the monument and bent her hand to a faint curve. She brought the hand to her helmet just above the eye-shield. "In nomine Patris." To her chest, "et Fili," and then in a sweeping motion, touching each shoulder, "et Spiritus Sancti." None of the words made sense, but he felt her feeling behind them, and the sense that she invoked something far greater than all of the galaxy's gods.

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen."

The gesture again, and the words spoken faster, "In nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti."

He joined her on his knees and folded his hands. "Guide them well, Kalahira, goddess of oceans, friend of the dead."

"At least the skies are beautiful," she said as she looked up. "I've seen vids of the Aurora Borealis on Earth, and this is even more amazing. There are worse places to die, I guess."

He stood quickly; the ice burned him through the leather he wore. "I've never seen anything like the patterns. The ripples remind me of the waves in the colorful lit fountains the hanar insisted on keeping in their spaceports. Lovely, but painful to behold for too long."

"Thanks for praying with me, querido."

"Has your faith returned?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. But at least I can give them what Sil taught me. I learned that prayer from her and her father."

"What did the words mean?"

"'In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.' The Father is God, the Son, Jesus, and I'm damned if I understand what the hell the 'Holy Ghost' is. Sil didn't either when her dad taught us."

"I've read some of the lore of your 'Christianity,' but much of it escapes me. I find it far too esoteric. Do humans grasp the intricacy?"

"Not really, especially not Catholics. That prayer was Catholic. Most of the rituals are wrapped up in the clergy, and they're the only ones that understand them."

"I used to think humans a simple people until I read a few of your myths and histories."

He helped her to her feet, and slipped his arms about her waist. She still stared at the monument, motionless, but for small gasps from the speaker that tore at his heart.

"Siha…"

"I'm ok. Really."

"Is there nothing I can do to ease your pain?"

"You're here, querido. It's my own damned fault. I got Hackett's message months ago, but I just couldn't… But if we're going to die on that damned Reaper, I owed the dead this much."

He felt like a fool when he pressed his filter-covered lips to her helmet's speaker, but a smile seemed to reach her eyes as he did, and the faint tracery of her gloved finger over his covered frill more than made up for it.

"Would it have been easier if you had visited sooner?"

"Hell, I don't know. But it would have been _over with_, which is about the best you can ask for."

"You've been staring at the statue."

"Yeah."

"Is it adequate to honor the lost?" A question, perhaps less offensive than his opinion.

"It's the best I can do. You don't like it, do you?"

"It's… simple."

"Is that like saying Miranda's 'round?' Whatever the hell that means."

"I mean no offense, but it seems unfitting somehow."

"Standard military design. The 'artists' come from the same recruitment classes as soldiers."

No irony. No humor. A military mindset, and one that had taken him too much time to understand, especially in combat.

"It's better than nothing," she said finally. "Not adequate to represent the true cost of their loss, but something to show that they're remembered."

"You honor them and their memories, Siha. They must have died proud and with honor for all they accomplished under your command."

"Not enough honor."

"Is there ever enough for those that lose their lives to bring light to the galaxy? And yet we do what we must, as best we can."

"And then whack ourselves over the head with guilt later when no one's looking, because it can't ever be enough."

"Commander!" He shuddered as Operative Lawson's clipped accent cut through the frozen air.

"What is it?"

"Ms. Zorah needs your assistance."

"Hey, you ok?"

"I am… fine, Shepard." Though her voice seemed to indicate otherwise.

"She didn't say anything, did she?"

"I tried to help her but…"

"But you're Cerberus. Yeah, I'll take care of it. And I'll let her know later that you were just trying…"

"There's no need, Commander. It's all in a day's duties."

"Don't give me that, Miranda. I know why you're here, and I know that it's probably the last place you should be in some people's eyes. I want you to know that it's appreciated. _Very_ appreciated."

"I… Thank you, Commander. She's over by the wreckage of the CIC."

"For Pressley." She put a hand on Operative Lawson's shoulder.

He wondered how Tali'Zorah might mourn a man who had once despised everyone not of his own species. _But you love a woman who once claimed to believe the same things._ Ellen moved sure on the ice, and quickly, as if she'd grown accustomed to the slick footing of this world toward an open section of wreckage. A streak of purple and shadow resolved itself into the quarian as they approached, who stood, helmet cast down in front of the galaxy map's ramp. Garrus stood off to the side, his mandibles twitching and arms folded. _Dissaproval_.

"You ok, Tali?"

"I just… Keelah, I didn't expect to… I thought it would be easy seeing the _Normandy_ again." Her voice had thickened as much as it had when they'd discovered her father's body.

"I know. Except I didn't think it would be easy."

"It's never easy for a captain, Shepard vas Normandy."

"This was more than a ship and more than a crew."

"It's so different now. Horrible. The ship _looks_ the same, but it's just a copy, and the crew…"

"Is one of the finest I've served with."

"Really, Shepard? There's no 'Pressley' in this crew. No Adams. No Kaidan."

"No, but there are others, each with their own strengths, Tali'Zorah," he said.

"You remember how Pressley was when you first met him, and I hate to think about what you first thought of _me_."

A sniff beneath the helmet and then a small laugh. "I joined to defeat _Saren_, not for the bosh'tet who only saved my life for the information I had and then didn't want me on her crew."

"Ouch! Walked right into that one."

"Shepard objected to me too," Garrus said. "And this time, she came _looking_ for me."

"Well, for 'Archangel.' But you were a damned good surprise."

"Hm. I seem to be fortunate in missing your endless 'objections,' Siha."

"Even though you went looking for them." He heard the amusement in her voice, though he couldn't see any traces of a smile in her eyes.

"Operative Lawson seems upset—something strange for a woman with a soul colder than the frozen ground here. What was said?"

"Tali here drove her off when she asked if there was anything she could do. I'm not Lawson's or Cerberus' biggest fan, but her offer was genuine."

"It's just… I just…"

Ellen put her free arm about Tali'Zorah, and the other had never left him. The last shared embrace he'd enjoyed had been with Kolyat and Irikah far too many years before.

"Hey, it's ok. This isn't easy for any of us."

"Comforting blindly without confronting irrationality isn't the best thing for unit cohesiveness," Garrus said.

"Come on, Garrus, Tali's been through a lot lately."

"And I haven't?"

"Dios mio… Are we really going to have a competition about who's been through the most? Because if so, I win. I _died_."

"And you look much better for it."

"Bosh'tet," Tali'Zorah muttered.

"Look, we're all here for the same reasons: because the old _Normandy_ and its crew _mattered_, and because we need to share that with others who care as much as we do."

"You're saying the spirit of the old _Normandy_ is here with us in its resting place?"

"Well, not quite so poetically, but, yeah. Kind of."

The turian patted Tal'Zorah on the back, but gingerly as if he feared she'd attack. "The spirit seems to be affecting me too, and in all the wrong ways. I'm sorry, Tali."

"It's all right, bosh'tet."

"Still insulting me?"

"Maybe it's the old _Normandy_'s spirit, idiot. But thanks."

"Sibling rivalry," Ellen said and patted Tali'Zorah on the back. She slipped her arms fully around him.

"I see no siblings, Siha. Weren't you a sole child?"

"You don't? I see kin here. My sister, my brother, my querido…"

"Something nice from you, Shepard?"

"Don't push it, hermano. My elbow's still tingling."

"Er-man-o? Another of your 'Spanish' words?"

"It means 'brother,'" Tali'Zorah said.

"Sí, hermanita."

"Little sister? Thank you… Captain."

"Are you ready to say goodbye?"

"Yes, I think so." A nod of the helmet.

The turian nodded as well, encased in his hood of ceramic and glass.


	11. Heroes

Ellen had motioned everyone into a loose circle around the horrid monument. He stood beside her, closer than Operative Lawson, who still seemed to be shunned by the rest of the company. He felt a momentary flash of warmth for the Operative that faded quickly when he thought of her extreme loyalty to Cerberus and her belief that humans should be dominant. The Operative had never spoken harsh words to him, or said much at all to him, but he still noted the way the she seemed to flinch when he reached for his Siha's hand. He would always be "alien" to such a human, whether she took personal notice of him or no.

"I'm not usually good at making speeches, so cut me a little slack, hunh?"

The Doctor shook her head, and he heard a faint snicker from beneath her helmet. Beside him, Ellen took a breath that should have been deep, but for the choking in the midst of her inhalation.

_Yeah right, Commander,_ he heard over the radio.

"I was told when I woke up that everyone 'important' survived the crash. That 'only a few crewmen on the lower decks' were lost. That everything that mattered was saved the day the Collectors shot the _Normandy_ out of the sky. But I think we all know better than that. That a ship's crew is larger than the count of the individuals who make it up, infinitely larger than its officers and its principals.

"We sing of the ship's commander, of the crewmen who fire the guns, of the officers who make the calls in battle. We hail _them_ as heroes, but we forget the rest who make the ship run. The engineers who keep the ship from falling to pieces, the relief navigators who keep the ship on course when the primary sleeps. The mess staff who keep the crew from starvation. The mechanics who keep the drop vehicles running after we nearly destroy them on endless worlds with far too many mountains. Any one of the pieces goes missing, and the ship fails.

"_Normandy_ lost her heart that day, when her unsung were killed. This is our chance to honor the invisible, who were every bit as responsible for the victory over Sovereign and Saren as I was, if not more so."

Twenty names she recited from her "faulty" memory, twenty anecdotes, supplemented with Tali'Zorah's memories and Garrus' stories.

"My XO died that day also, taken in battle when the Collectors first opened fire. I don't really have the right words to honor Navigator Pressley, one of the finest XOs I've ever served beside, but I'll miss his dedication and the boyish glee he kept hidden until we stole the _Normandy_. He was a fine man and a kindred spirit. I'll remember the men and women lost as best I can, but I can't give them the honor they deserve. They are every inch the heroes as the most lauded of the _Normandy'_s crew, and they deserve just as many accolades. _Vayan con Dios, mis hermanos_."

As she made that crossing gesture, Tali'Zorah said, "Keelah se'lai!"

She leaned toward him and whispered, "It means, 'Go with God, brothers,' or 'Godspeed, brothers.'"

"A song for the fine men and women who led the fight to save the Citadel!" Donnelly said. "If yer dad was a proper Scottsman, he should have taught ye this, Commander…"

The man launched into a song with lyrics that barely translated, and only slowly.

"Should old acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?"

"That he did," she said, and raised a gravelly voice to join him.

"Should old acquaintance be forgot,

and old lang syne?

"For auld lang syne, my dears,

for auld lang syne,

we'll take a cup of kindness yet,

for auld lang syne."

"That's all I know, though."

"It's enough, Commander. Three rounds and we'll be done."

"What does 'auld lang syne' mean, Siha?" He kept his voice low so that the Engineer might not laugh.

"'Days gone by,' or 'long ago.' It's a song about memory."

This time, when the Engineer started the song, Operative Lawson joined in and eased the grating of Ellen's voice on his ears. _Tears distort human voices,_ he tried to reassure himself. Engineer Daniels hummed tunelessly and sang a word or two, while Doctor Chakwas remained silent. Garrus, on the opposite side of the circle, stared at each of the humans in turn, the hinged joint on his helmet drooping likely with his jaw beneath. And then, the cacophony was over and he was able to pull in a relieved breath.

"Donnelly, don't encourage Shepard to sing," the turian said. "Please, for the sake of all of our ears."

"Bah! What do ye know about singing? This song is for everyone, and not for a choir of angels."

"And my elbow still hasn't recovered. Son of a bitch."

"Another song, Commander!"

"Garrus looks like he wants to kill you."

"Did yer dad teach ye 'Amazing Grace?'"

She shook her head.

"Crossin' yerself like that, he probably wouldn't."

"Shepard, we should discuss this on board the shuttle," Operative Lawson said.

"Aww, you're no fun," Daniels said.

"We're already overdue for a briefing. Ms. Zorah, I need you to attend."

"Oh, Keelah, what now?"

"Relax, Tali. Miranda just wanted to get your impressions on a few modifications Cerberus sent us."

"All right, Shepard, for your sake. You'll be there, won't you?"

"I'm sorry. I have to do a little message-writing. Twenty-one, to be exact."

Operative Lawson motioned to Ellen as the rest piled into the shuttle.

"You see what I'm up against, Shepard? I can't even to the smallest thing for her, or for you, without running into comparisons with your old Alliance second-in-command."

"No one's comparing you, Miranda. Not me."

"'The finest XO?'"

"I said, 'one of' and I've only had _two_. Before that, _I_ was an XO, and I wasn't anywhere nearly as good at it as you are."

The Operative flinched as he put an arm around his Siha, and twitched when she leaned against him.

"I want you to be honest with me, Shepard. Tell me why I run into so much resistance with the aliens we work with."

A deep breath. "All right. First you're Cerberus. I mean _dedicated_, one-hundred-fifty percent loyal to Cerberus, no matter what they're doing. And you're proud of it. Tali's people were attacked and killed by Cerberus agents, but you defended their actions on Freedom's Progress. Cerberus doesn't sit too well with non-humans, and probably for very good reasons. I'm working with Cerberus now, and it damned well _doesn't_ sit well with me. And then there's that jerking you do."

"Jerking?"

She ran her free hand across his belly, slowly, and so gently he felt only a faint pressure that did nothing to rouse him, though the Operative's presence might have squelched his usual, almost maddening need to be in _contact_ with her, whether the touch of her foot beneath the table when they ate, or her hand in his when they spoke. She clasped her hands where they met around his waist. The effect on the Operative, though, nearly wrenched a laugh out of him; the woman jumped as if she'd had her shields overloaded.

"Maybe I should have said, 'seizure.'"

"Shepard, the drell is a valuable addition to our crew…"

"Thane."

"I'm sorry, Commander?"

"His name is Thane."

"Siha, the others await us aboard the shuttle."

"He has proven a more valuable addition to the crew than his dossier led me to expect, but…"

"And Garrus?"

"Nothing in his dossier indicated that the turian would…"

"You hear it, don't you?"

"I'm sorry, Commander. I don't understand what you're getting at."

"You call Garrus, 'the turian,' Thane, 'the drell,' and I'm guessing Tali's 'the quarian.' When they're individuals to you rather than just generic 'aliens,' maybe you'll see why you're getting resistance." Her words should have been delivered with hostility, but instead, she kept her voice quiet.

Operative Lawson still staggered as if she'd been slapped. "You think I don't see them as individuals?"

"How about as equals?"

"They are under my command."

"True."

"And yours."

"And when off duty? Look, I'm not trying to insult you, Miranda. I used to be just like you, but a couple of these people taught me that humanity wasn't the galaxy's most valuable asset. Not by a long shot."

"The Illusive Man will be very disappointed to hear you say that. I can't say I'm thrilled to hear it either."

"The Illusive Man can suck a set of varren balls for all I care. But I wasn't talking about species and delusions of superiority. I was talking about friendship, about knowledge, about sharing and understanding."

A half-laugh from the Operative. "'Varren balls,' Commander?"

"Make sure to bold that in your next report."

"And how is this supposed to help me handle Ms. Zorah?"

"Just don't go all 'Cerberus' on her. She doesn't hate everyone associated with Cerberus. She and Kelly are close, and she's fond of Daniels and Donnelly."

"She's a fine engineer, better than the two humans she supervises."

"And tell her that. It'll mean something coming from Cerberus. Maybe."

"Or she'll think it's a plot to manipulate her," he said.

"The dr—Mr. Krios—makes a good point."

"Well, you have to start somewhere."

"Thanks, Commander."

"Any time."

When the Operative headed for the shuttle, he took a moment to feel the _contact_ he shared with her, the hint of plates pressing into his lower back, the roughness of her helmet against his palm, the gentle pressure of her gauntleted fingers against his waist. As she'd spoken to Operative Lawson, she'd never released her grip.

"'Crew' isn't just 'crew' to you, Siha. The organization of these individuals is something larger, with a certain mysticism about it."

"Poetry always makes things sound better."


	12. Memory

Life Support felt _emptier_ than it usually did after she'd given him a quick kiss farewell. _I really have to write those messages. The families have been waiting long enough. Too damned long, and I only made it worse._ He'd hoped she'd write them there, but she'd just muttered, _Yeah right—like I can focus with the King of Distraction sitting across from me._ He puttered around with several books on his PDA, all of which had once stimulated his mind in his isolation, one an examination of turians and their attraction to human Buddhism. He attempted to pray and to meditate as he'd once done so easily before she'd taken him over, but it had become as much a dismal failure as his reading.

He found his body in the elevator before the thought had even crossed his mind, and discovered he'd already triggered the controls without his own volition. She didn't look up when the door to her cabin swished open. She sat at her computer desk, shoulders shaking, a vid of two girl children running and tumbling in a field of high grasses. Two children with _pistols_ strapped to their backs, the dark galaxy's intrusion an offense on an otherwise bright, but deepening afternoon. He crouched beside her chair and his heart contorted at the streaks that soiled her cheeks anew. She'd grieved enough this day for a lifetime or two.

"Siha…"

"_Ellie, time for dinner!_" His translator gave the round-faced deep-skinned woman an accent much like Ellen's. Her mother? She looked only a little like her in the shape of her forehead, and the jawline.

"_But, Mom! Sil and I_…"

"_Dad's gonna blow a gasket_," said a slightly lighter-skinned girl with jaw-length brown hair. "_I have to go._"

"_But, Sil!_"

"_I'm not losing a week's extranet just so you can learn a few more words for Jorge_."

"_Ellie, now!_"

"_Fine, Mooooom_." She turned toward the camera, and he caught a flash of bright blue before she whipped her head around, an elaborate plait of shadow following her in the fading sunlight.

"Your mother and your friend?"

She paused the vid. "I was just looking up some vids of Mindoir. Don't know why, really. But yeah, that's Mom and Sil. Dad had a whole storehouse he'd uploaded and never told me about. Maybe if he'd lived…"

"_Blane, stop filming and get your ass over here! Ellie's not going to learn…_"

"_Our Ellen's growing fast,_" he swung the camera to face him—a pale human with straw-colored hair and eyes as arresting as his daughter's, "_and I'll bet you'll regret it in ten years when we __**don't**__ have this on camera_."

"_You said that yesterday about frigging breakfast! Fine, film your assess getting over here for dinner._"

"I see where you get your mouth, Siha, though you seem to resemble your father more."

"And I hated looking in the mirror for years after the attack. I always wanted to look more like Mom." Why? She seemed nowhere nearly as attractive to his eye.

The camera swung back and forth as it caught little Ellen in profile, her father's hand beneath her ear, drawing her to his chest. She smiled and looked up at him, her eyes worshipful.

"I forgot what a daddy's girl I was," she snickered, "and it drove Mom nuts."

The camera swung in and closed in on her mother's face, which burst into a huge smile reminiscent of Ellen's own, the lips almost as full, and just as mobile. It was the sort of smile that turned a barely attractive woman into a bright beam of light.

"_Still filming… You're hopeless._"

"_Aye, Hannah. Always, especially you._"

"_Too smooth for your own good…_" The man leaned in and reached for her lips, but she backed away. "_Only if you turn that damned thing off._"

"_Eewww. Gross! You guys have a bedroom…_"

The vid cut off suddenly.

"Is it normal for human children to feel disgust at their parents' affection?"

"I hope so, because, well, yuck. You're telling me Kolyat never acted like I did?"

"How old were you in that recording, Siha?"

"Ten or eleven, I think." She stood. "Sit, querido. I'll pull up another chair."

Instead, after he sat, he pulled her onto his lap and drew her lips down to his. She tasted of salt, and still dripped; she'd left her quarters warmer than most humans preferred. The remnants of her tears rained down upon his cheeks as her hands explored the back of his neck. His heart had gone cold when she asked about Kolyat, though he could never have expected her to guess why, but she warmed more than just his body as she melted against him. She drew back and gasped for breath just as she'd driven the last chill from his soul. He brushed in vain at the streaks that he'd learned earlier would just smear all over his palm and her face.

"Haven't you wept enough today, Siha?"

"Not that I'm complaining, but I know a dodge when I feel one."

"Dodge?"

"Yeah."

"Why do you pain yourself further?"

"I've never looked for anything from Mindoir. Not until now. It doesn't hurt like the _Normandy_ does. It's more like the stinging when you first put medigel on a wound. _Cleansing_, I guess. There was a lot of contamination, but I'm finally seeing the good in the memories."

"Did your parents remain affectionate until Kalahira claimed them?"

"Yeah. Disgustingly so."

"I don't understand why you would feel disgust at seeing two people love each other."

"You never answered my question."

"First, explain why human children are so strange."

"Are they? I guess it's just that you see your parents as being the embodiment of authority and everything good and great in the universe, and to think of them… you know… Ick!"

"You still find it disturbing?"

"Nah, it's kind of cute to see them flirting now, but thinking of them doing…" She shuddered, and grinned. "Even though that's where I came from. Kolyat never…?"

He clenched his outer lids shut and swallowed. The air suddenly thickened, though she'd kept the humidity as low as it was in Life Support.

"Never mind." She kissed his forehead. "Not if it makes you feel like that."

He swallowed again and hoped he could speak the words. He could do no greater insult to _her_ memory. "Siha, by the time Kolyat was that age, he saw no affection when I was home between contracts."

"Oh… I'm sorry."

"You couldn't have known."

"I guess distance will do that…" He felt words brewing in her, but she let her hands roam over his chest instead.

"You seem to wish to speak."

"No. Just curious, when were you diagnosed with Kepral's?"

"Twelve years ago."

"Irikah knew?"

"She thought it the will of the gods. A single life given for the loss of many lives."

"Wait, _what_?" He heard the _indignation_, and saw the helmet fly again in memory.

"I couldn't disagree; I reclaimed the path of sin after she showed me a way to live apart from it."

"You just accepted that? What… the… _fuck_? I've never heard such unholy horseshit in my life!"

"Your people believe in karma, past deeds waiting to claim their price upon a soul."

"You killed motherfucking _slavers_! The worst fucking scum in the galaxy!"

"She listened when I spoke of my fears, and lent me what support she still could after I left her alone with Kolyat too many times to count."

"Son of a bitch. Just… I don't… She _knew_ when she married you that you were an assassin. That's just… just fucked up."

"Drell aren't like humans, Siha. Our faiths are very different, as is our view of the galaxy. What has been taken must be taken in turn, and the price must be accepted, whether one's soul made the decision to act or no."

"You mean you don't stand by the people you marry? If you'd started out as, hell, a garbage collector and had turned assassin, maybe I'd understand. But you _had no choice_. You were conditioned at _six_, for fuck's sake!"

"Perhaps I should have become a garbage collector. It would have been a far more honorable path." He feared her next words would slice even deeper into the core of him.

"You saved the galaxy how much pain? How many lives? But she still let you believe that the gods gave you a disease instead of hailing you as the hero you are… Just… Never mind. Maybe we should talk about something else…"

"If that is what you will, Siha."

"I can't take seeing you like this… But I can't shut up… Fuck. I'm sorry. I'm blundering where I have no business." The rising liquid in her eyes tore at him as much as her words had.

"Your heart speaks where your words flay. I can't fault you the views your people hold, even if you insult Irikah's memory."

"I didn't mean to insult you, or her, I just…"

"You speak from affection, as a Siha would." He covered her hand with both of his.

She looked away. "I… Anyway, I ran across something that might crack you up."

She slipped one hand out of his grasp to flip a new vid into view. She was older here and he saw she had taken on almost all of her full female shape as she stood, head cast down, her unbound waist-length hair a shadow over her face. She wore a long, fluid skirt the color of Kahje's seas that reached down to deep earthen feet. Five-toed feet, with short, rounded nails. _This is what human female feet look like, similar to their hands, curved and almost graceful in the middle._ On her ankles she wore golden chains that jingled as she twitched. Her bare upraised arms had been adorned in a similar fashion, though the thin bands had been forged solid. They accented the slenderness of those deep-shaded arms and clinked as she shifted. He caught glimpses of a bare belly through the shadows, a hint of a rounded indentation in the middle. _Human females have those as well…_ He'd focused so long on every aspect of her that he'd ignored three other girls in the background, and two young males dressed in loose white pants and tan over-tunics.

Her hands fluttered as a slow, but persistent layered beat began. She straightened and as her hands made a journey as a beat of a heart from her waist to her forehead and back again, her hips swayed, finally pushing back the midnight curtain that concealed her. She moved gently with the beat, in perfect time, her eyes closed and dark beneath a deep brown paint. She spun as the other girls mimicked her movements, and he caught a glimpse of the short sea-blue top that only barely covered large breasts while it bared the rest of her to the line of her skirt. He stared up to her chest, where it hovered just above his level of sight. _Smaller. Human women shrink with age?_

The woman who warmed his lap burst out laughing. "A school performance, and since we had no money, we wore costumes that were used God knows how many times. Either the padding was going to fall out or I was."

Whatever this form of dancing was, it seemed to occupy every facet of her body, from small finger-gestures to subtle narrowing and widening of her eyes, to the fluid movement of her lips and hips. He watched the interplay between her and the two boys as the lyrics to the song spoke of "kohl lined eyes," and of the men coming spend time with her, since she hadn't "finished" with them yet. The translation seemed a little odd, and the dance all the stranger. But what surprised him the most was the reaction of one of the boys—she pursued and courted him in the song, as gentle and soft as a breeze—but he sensed even beyond the performance, the boy found her unattractive. The other paler-skinned boy seemed far beyond entranced, much as he was as he watched her.

She giggled as she watched, and as the dance ended, she shot him a quizzical look. "You're not laughing."

"I never knew you could dance, Siha."

"I thought I looked ridiculous."

"If by 'ridiculous,' you mean, 'beautiful,' then perhaps you're correct. Who were the boys?"

"The one with the dark hair and who looked at me like I carried the plague was Jorge. The other was Brandon."

"The two you mentioned in your stories and the vid?"

"The same. Call it Mindoir's version of a love tragedy. Instead of the usual triangle, it was a 'love square.' I had a major crush on Jorge who utterly adored Sil. Brandon apparently really liked me, but Sil wanted him. Ms. Mehta picked up on the vibe perfectly when she cast the parts."

"Ms. Mehta?"

"Our teacher. God, I haven't thought about her in years. She was obsessed with old Indian vids from two centuries ago."

"Do you still remember the movements from that dance of yours?"

"I guess."

"Have you finished your messages?"

"I'm half-through."

"Then I will meditate, and when you finish…"

She raised an eyebrow.

"A performance might ease your earlier insult. I'll relocate the table."

"_Dios mio_…" She flushed bright burgundy.

"I especially look forward to this memory, my Siha."


End file.
